Balmoral Chicken with creamy whisky sauce

Balmoral Chicken

Balmoral Chicken with whisky sauce

Today I am making Balmoral Chicken

This dish uses the beloved Scottish favourite, haggis

Balmoral Chicken is simply chicken breasts stuffed with haggis and wrapped in bacon, with a wonderful creamy whisky sauce to go over the top

So with Burns night coming up in the month of January, I was at a loss to find canned haggis or any haggis for that matter without paying over the odds here in Texas, so I did what any girl would do, I begged on Facebook. A wonderful friend saved the day and gave up her last tin of Haggis to me so I could make this dish this week! Sylvia and Steve I owe you guys big time

So in honour of Robert Burns I am making a great haggis dish, you can make it too on Burns night on January 25th and celebrate Burn's life and recite a few Burns poems, like many a Scot will be doing



You will need

4 Chicken breasts
Tin of haggis
10-12 rashers of streaky bacon (or British back bacon is even better)

For the whisky sauce
2 tbsp whisky
250ml/8floz chicken stock
100ml/3floz Whipping cream
20g/2 tbsp Butter
Fresh ground pepper

• Pre-heat the oven to 200C/400F

• Using a sharp knife, cut a slit on the top of each chicken breast, and then slice on the inside to widen the space, be careful not to cut all the way through

• If using canned haggis,  remove from can and warm slightly in microwave so it is easier to work with 

• Stuff a few spoonfuls of haggis into the chicken breast

• Wrap the chicken with 2 or 3 slices of bacon, closing the stuffed gap as you go

• Place on a baking tray and bake in the oven, uncovered, for 25-30 minutes until the chicken is fully cooked

• While the chicken is baking make the whisky sauce

• Mix chicken stock and whisky in a pan, bringing to the boil and reduce the volume by half

• Add the cream and continue to stir

• Add butter and grind in the pepper corns to taste (don't be shy with the pepper) 

• Once butter has melted the sauce is ready to pour

• Once chicken is ready, serve with vegetables of choice and pour the sauce over the chicken

Enjoy



This dish can also be made stuffed with black pudding instead of haggis, or both !

The sauce would also be good with steak

Balmoral Chicken

Balmoral Chicken with whisky sauce

Address tae a Haggis by Robert Burns

Fair fa' your honest, sonsie face,
Great chieftain o the puddin'-race!
Aboon them a' ye tak your place,
Painch, tripe, or thairm:
Weel are ye worthy o' a grace

As lang's my arm.

The groaning trencher there ye fill,
Your hurdies like a distant hill,
Your pin wad help to mend a mill
In time o need,
While thro your pores the dews distil
Like amber bead.

His knife see rustic Labour dight,
An cut you up wi ready slight,
Trenching your gushing entrails bright,
Like onie ditch;
And then, O what a glorious sight,
Warm-reekin, rich!

Then, horn for horn, they stretch an strive:
Deil tak the hindmost, on they drive,
Till a' their weel-swall'd kytes belyve
Are bent like drums;
The auld Guidman, maist like to rive,
'Bethankit' hums.

Is there that owre his French ragout,
Or olio that wad staw a sow,
Or fricassee wad mak her spew
Wi perfect scunner,
Looks down wi sneering, scornfu view
On sic a dinner?

Poor devil! see him owre his trash,
As feckless as a wither'd rash,
His spindle shank a guid whip-lash,
His nieve a nit;
Thro bloody flood or field to dash,
O how unfit!

But mark the Rustic, haggis-fed,
The trembling earth resounds his tread,
Clap in his walie nieve a blade,
He'll make it whissle;
An legs an arms, an heads will sned,
Like taps o thrissle.

Ye Pow'rs, wha mak mankind your care,
And dish them out their bill o fare,
Auld Scotland wants nae skinking ware
That jaups in luggies:
But, if ye wish her gratefu prayer,
Gie her a Haggis